Germline: The Subterrene War: Book 1 by T.C. McCarthy Page B

which filled me with dread. At first I thought I’d been busted. Two guys in suits sat in the hotel lobby, their black shoes covered with Kazakh dust, and over it all they wore white lab coats, which had turned a sickly yellow from the long train ride northward. Both of them were old and wore glasses, and you could tell if you’d spent any time in D.C. at all that they were Feds, civilians, here for some reason that was bound to make you sick.
    Ox looked grim. When he saw the expression on my face, and my need to prop myself against the doorframe, he shook his head.
    “These guys want to talk, Scout. You
can
talk, right?”
    One of them stood and shook my hand when I approached. “I’m Dr. Stephens and this is my colleague Dr. Franks. Thanks for joining us, Mr. Wendell. We won’t take too much of your time.”
    “You guys look like shrinks. Did you come to take me away? Because I like it here. I don’t want to go back, not yet.”
    They looked at each other, and one pulled out a clipboard while the first kept talking. “No, Oscar, we didn’t come to take you away. We just came to talk.”
    “Man.” I sat near them on a soft chair, its cushion half burned. “I’m freakin’ tired. They don’t get many holo-vids out here and the restaurants are awful.”
    “I’ll be downstairs in ops,” Ox said. “If you need me, just yell.” When he was gone, the room went quiet except for the sounds of a basketball game outside.
    “Mr. Wendell, we were wondering if you wouldn’t mind talking to us about Bridgette.”
    “What about her?” I didn’t let it show, but the question turned me cold despite the heat, and I could see a hunger in them that made everything outside go dark and the room get a little dimmer. Something about them said
killers. Murderers.
    “According to our records, you had a relationship with her. You two were close, is that correct?”
    “That’s correct.”
    “And she helped you on the retreat from Pavlodar, last year?”
    “Yeah.” The quiet one’s hands looked jumpy as he took notes, and I couldn’t tell if it was a hallucination or reality, but the hands appeared to vibrate—so fast that he looked about to break a finger while writing. When they disappeared in a blur, I knew that I was more messed up than anyone realized. “She helped me.”
    “Did you love her?”
    I glared at him and then his friend. “Who are you guys?”
    “Relax, Mr. Wendell. We’re with the Defense Policy Board—actually, a special subcommittee under the DPB, established to represent the interests of contractors engaged in war production. We’re here to ask questions, to learn from you.”
    “Learn what?”
    The other one spoke then, and his voice was high, like a girl’s, but quiet. “About Bridgette. So we can optimize.”
    “What he’s trying to say,” the first one explained, “is that you got closer to one of our products than we ever could, near the end of its service term. You’re not the only one to, uh… have feelings for one of our units. We’ve been tasked to interview you and others like you so we can figure out what the units are thinking, in general, when they’re close to discharge; why they would want to be with a real human.”
    “But what good would that do? And I have a few questions of my own, like why did you make them all the same? Why did you make them girls?”
    He looked at the floor. The room went quiet again and I could hear the other one gulp loudly as he took a sip of water, the plastic bottle sweating with condensation. The first one tapped a finger against his thigh before answering.
    “To answer your first question, we use the information to extend their shelf life. If we can get a more accurate picture of the things they focus on after two years on the line, what issues they have, psychologically, it’s entirely possible we can establish a protocol—either with drug therapy or mental preconditioning—to prevent them from collapsing so quickly. To make it so